


Endgame’s Gifts

by B_Radley



Series: Fulcrum and Covenant: Genesis [47]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Duty, Episode: s07e09 Old Friends Not Forgotten, Gen, Loss, Mandos Gonna Mando, Regret, The Siege of Mandalore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:49:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23796421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/B_Radley/pseuds/B_Radley
Summary: Ahsoka Tano reflects on her mission to find Maul, as well as the paths that had brought her here.
Relationships: Ahsoka Tano/Original Character(s) (referenced)
Series: Fulcrum and Covenant: Genesis [47]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/981186
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	Endgame’s Gifts

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [If So Be It Yield](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8486929) by [B_Radley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/B_Radley/pseuds/B_Radley). 



> This is something I came up with, to bring the the latest episode _Old Friends Not Forgotten_ in line with my Clone Wars story in the Radley-verse, or, ‘In Between the Stories You Know.’
> 
> It also kinda deals with the timeline, lengthens a bit. I don’t think everything that happened in these episodes took place over the space of a few weeks. Takes place after Ahsoka left the Martez sisters, but before she meets up with Anakin and Obi-Wan.

Ahsoka Tano watches over her datapad as she waits in the Coruscant spaceport. She knows that there might be a few people here that might be interested that she had returned.

At least a couple of those people, she actually regrets not making contact with.

She starts for a moment as a memory from her first few weeks away from the Jedi Temple flits just out of her peripheral vision. She glances with her full vision, then relaxes.

It’s only another swindler that looks like the one that had sold her a karked-up speederbike. She pushes any other thoughts of Nyx Okami and her brief acquaintance. One that had made her almost regret leaving the Order.

At least until she had met the Martez sisters. She smiles to herself as she sips her caf, thinking of her adventures and misadventures she had faced with those two. An association that had opened her eyes and reinforced her new path.

Just before it had taken yet another turn, with her detection of Maul’s association with Mandalore.

The transmission logs that she’d found on Oba Diah, had led her and Bo-Katan’s group to a path to Maul, but not a direct one. It had taken so many turns and false trails to find other paths. She closes her eyes as she thinks of one of these tracks that had sent her running and concealing herself in the busy spaceport on Garel.

To a bar where she’d then finished her brief career in the food service industry. A bar that another memory had walked into. One that had sent her running away from that memory, with newfound, confusing emotions.

On the very day that she’d actually turned an adult in the Republic, on her seventeenth birthday.

She sees the moment painted on her eyelids. When she’d sensed a familiar presence in the Force. Taliesin Croft, her hunt-brother in one of her cultures and her clan-leader in the other. Someone who had been one of those who had helped prepare her for her own apprenticeship, even when he was in the midst of his own, as the padawan to her hunt-mother, Shaak Ti.

She hadn’t told him of her quest to help his mother’s world, of her hunt for Maul—the one who had taken so much from her master’s master, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

She had sensed his own disillusion with the Jedi and the war, even as he was on a mission to recruit Outer Rim pirates as privateers for the Republic. Including the one who had taken both Ahsoka and Tal in, helping Tal with his mission, as well as giving and taking comfort to and from them both, all while the pirate mourned the loss of her friend and Ahsoka and Tal’s one time enemy, Asajj Ventress.

Ahsoka curses as those emotions—the warmth and other lessons she’d experienced during her few days on the _Opportunity_ with Lassa Rhayme and her crew. She shoves the emotions—the confusion as well as the warmth of new sensations away.

Instead she focuses on Taliesin’s disillusion. One caused in part by Ahsoka’s treatment at the hands of the Republic. Disillusion that had nearly cost him his place in the Order, a sadness and grief that had extended to an anger and disconnect from his beloved master.

She’d instinctively known that if she’d told Tal what she was doing, he would’ve immediately taken off with her, making her mission his.

Something that neither needed, with his muddled emotions, as well as her own, and his anger and pain that was directed at the Jedi. She allows herself to relish certain of those emotions, especially the warmth and the laughter of those few days.

Ahsoka looks up and nods as a figure approaches her. She rises and slings her small pack as she glimpses the Mandalorian concealed under the hood.

“Hello, Ursa,” she says quietly. The woman stares at her, or at least her T-visor does. She’s not sure of the emotions, as she’d never seen Ursa Wren’s face, nor that of most of the Mandalorians, except for Bo-Katan. Whenever she’d asked about it, the Mandos had as one intoned, ‘this is the way.’

“Tano,” Ursa says, her tone as even and unemotional as it had always been with her. “You nearly stepped in it on Talos Minor. Some of his Death Watch minions nearly did for you.”

 _Was that warmth? Concern?_ she thinks. The thought is dispelled ten seconds later.

“You could’ve exposed us all, you could’ve warned Maul and the Syndicates of our moves.”

Ahsoka grins tightly. “Maybe so. But you and the Nite Owls weren’t exactly subtle when you went looking for those new players—Crimson Dawn. You gave a lot of business to medcenters and morgues on at least three worlds.”

Ursa says nothing. She turns and shoulders her way through the crowd. Ahsoka sighs and follows. _We’ve got a long way to go before we can confront Maul_.

It doesn’t take long before she is on the _Gauntlet_ , pulling out of orbit, piggybacking on an _Arquitens_ class light cruiser’s course, piloted by yet another equally taciturn helmet-head.

She starts as Ursa pulls her to the aft compartment. Her eyes widen as the woman pulls a bundle from a locker. She tosses it to Ahsoka, who catches it deftly. “We’re in for a bit of a slog, a slog that might take awhile,” she says, echoing Ahsoka’s earlier thoughts, “you might as well have better protection.”

Ahsoka holds her breath as she shakes out the bundle. A dark blue armored jerkin is fixed in her vision. Her fingers run over the silver trim, as well as the plates of beskar that serve a more practical function than the rich colors. She places it on a bench, then unzips the vest that she’d found after she’d left Coruscant with the Mandalorians.

The jerkin fits her like a glove. She remembers a brief conversation during the one campaign that she and Tal had shared, soon after she’d been selected as Anakin’s padawan, a conversation about what he’d known about his Mando side. A world that had rejected him, sending him back to his father’s world. Something she’d found that was rare in the Mando culture, in spite of having a proper name for those who were unwanted.

Croft, or Vheh’yaim in the beautiful language of his birthworld.

She could feel his pride in that part of his heritage, even though he’d left it behind. Idly, she wonders what aspect of his personality is reflected in heritage from Manda’yaim. She knows that his troopers had referred to him as the Besslara Verd, from their imprinted heritage.

The Warrior Bard.

Her hands open the bundle further, running over the pair of greaves and other pieces of armor.

She realizes that Ursa is holding something else out. A small piece of angled metal with a couple of sets of blinking lights on either side.

“Here. This is my contribution. Bo-Katan commissioned the rest of it for you.” Ahsoka can almost feel her tone soften. “I know you’ve probably worn some sort of headdress since you were born. Sorry I didn’t have access to one of those toothies that your hunters are always going on about.” She pauses. “My toddler, Sabine, helped me decide on the design.”

Ahsoka pulls the utilitarian headdress, with its leather and metal emblem recalling an akul tooth from her forehead. She takes a deep breath, then lifts the new adornment, with its beskar base to her forehead.

When it is in place, she looks at Ursa. The pilot has walked in as well. Ursa nods. “This is the way.”

“This is the way,”

She sees Croft’s bearded face and its crooked grin—something she’d only truly begun to appreciate during those days on _Opportunity_.

 _Guess you’ve arrived, Runt_ , his expression seems to say.

 _Guess so, Bait_ , she projects to her memory.

“This is the way,” she replies.


End file.
